Central Beef Inc., which operated as Florida's largest beef processing plant before recently suspending production, filed for bankruptcy protection after it couldn't find a buyer willing to keep it open, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Officials who put Central Beef's 214-worker plant into chapter 11 protection on Monday blamed several years of sales declines within the slaughterhouse industry, leading revenue to fall 9 percent to $164.3 million in the last two years. Central Beef officials have stopped buying cattle and are grinding remaining meat while they continue to search for buyers for the company's 107,630-square-foot manufacturing operations in Florida.
